The origin of chess remains a matter of controversy.

There is no credible evidence that chess

existed in a form approaching the modern game before the 6th century CE. Game pieces found in
Russia, China, India, Central Asia, Pakistan, and elsewhere that have been determined to be older
than that are now regarded as coming from earlier distantly related board games, often involving
dice and sometimes using playing boards of 100 or more squares.

One of those earlier games was a war game called chaturanga, a Sanskrit name for a battle
formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata. Chaturanga was flourishing in
northwestern India by the 7th century and is regarded as the earliest precursor of modern chess
because it had two key features found in all later chess variants—different pieces had different
powers (unlike checkers and go), and victory was based on one piece, the king of modern chess.

How chaturanga evolved is unclear. Some historians say chaturanga, perhaps played with dice on
a 64-square board, gradually transformed into shatranj (or chatrang), a two-player game popular
in northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and southern parts of Central Asia after 600 CE. Shatranj
resembled chaturanga but added a new piece, a firzān (counselor), which had nothing to do with
any troop formation. A game of shatranj could be won either by eliminating all an opponent’s
pieces (baring the king) or by ensuring the capture of the king. The initial positions of the pawns
and knights have not changed, but there were considerable regional and temporal variations for
the other pieces.

The game spread to the east, north, and west, taking on sharply different characteristics. In the
East, carried by Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders, and others, it was transformed into a game
with inscribed disks that were often placed on the intersection of the lines of the board rather
than within the squares. About 750 CE chess reached China, and by the 11th century it had come
to Japan and Korea. Chinese chess, the most popular version of the Eastern game, has 9 files and
10 ranks as well as a boundary—the river, between the 5th and 6th ranks—that limits access to
the enemy camp and makes the game slower than its Western cousin.

Introduction to Europe
A form of chaturanga or shatranj made its way to Europe by way of Persia, the Byzantine Empire,
and, perhaps most important of all, the expanding Arabian empire. The oldest recorded game,
found in a 10th-century manuscript, was played between a Baghdad historian, believed to be a
favourite of three successive caliphs, and a pupil.